Tuesday, August 28, 2007

The mystery of the tarnished rings

I had an interesting experience today.

Jay loves to swim. His family owns a lake house in central Mass and they go there almost every weekend during the summer. However, he is spending this summer with me and my family in Utah, and though we spent the 4th of July swimming with his family there, I can tell he is suffering from withdrawal. So, me being a loving fiancee and sneakily trying to get out of running one morning (we've been trying to exercise every day except Sundays together, and running is the free-est thing we can do, though definitely not my most favorite form of exertion.) I suggested that we do some laps at a nearby pool, that also happens to have a really cool water-slide. To my dismay, he suggests we run there, instead of drive, so I didn't get out of my run, but at least we had a fun slide as our reward. :)

We enter the club confronted with a large sign warning us of some disease, coslp;aoidjoweia, that people seem to be contracting from the pool. They are thus, not allowing anyone with diapers (Jay lovingly announces at the counter that I must remove my diaper or we have to go home) or small children in the pool and they highly advise us to not drink the pool water. (who drinks pool water?) We ran all the way there and we were not leaving without using the water-slide at least once, so after no debate we agreed not to drink the water and headed for the locker rooms. (I'm proud to say, I only had one naked-old-lady-encounter and she was at least wearing some undies) Everything seemed fine, except the water was a bit warm for my taste, and the pool seemed to be extaordinarily chlorinated - probably overcompensation for the coslp;aoidjoweia discovery.

Jay, with a bit of bewilderment and chagrin, noticed that the high chlorine content had turned our sterling silver CTR rings a nasty shade of gray - not how silver usually appears when tarnished. (This doesn't regularly happen, does it?) Luckily, my white gold engagement ring escaped unscathed :)

Upon returning home (after 20 laps and several slide runs) I tried soaking the rings in my ring cleaning fluid and then vinegar, neither worked. Luckily, the internet was, once again, able to save the day, and I discovered a lovely home remedy for tarnished silver. Note: you cannot simply sit the silver item on the aluminum foil, you must rub the foil all over the item, so get a container big enough for your hands and the object. Pretty cool eh?

Now we await the potential attack from coslp;aoidjoweia...

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

2 More Weeks 'til Marital Bliss

Well, it's been awhile since my last post (and honestly this does not surprise me... I tend to be a sporadic record keeper) but I mostly blame my wedding and high school reunion plans. The reunion is tomorrow and soon my efforts can be completely focused on just one thing. (after I register for classes, that is...)

It's amazing how many marriage experts exist in my midst. It seems that everywhere I go, people have figured out the best way to stay married. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I find the info to be quite useful, and even when it's not, the entertainment value is still pretty high.

Take, for example, my dad's old (very old) mission companion who stopped by for a random visit. He's in town from California for his 9th of 10 kids' wedding. After a quite intense (and lengthy) "discussion" about the speculated whereabouts of certain Book of Mormon sites, this white-haired, X-elder turns to us and says something about how he used to be a marriage counselor for the church and has some advice for us. "Fine, let's hear it", I think. Is he planning to take this to the "just do whatever she wants and you'll be happy" extreme we got from my bishop, or will it be more like the old classic "don't go to bed angry"? I quickly discovered that he had only one thing he was concerned about... "When you're on your honeymoon, take it slow and start from the top, working your way down". Wow, not exactly what I was expecting.

My hair dresser gave me a lot of advice about buying furniture. Some of it pretty practical, depending on where I end up living... Something I had never thought of was the suggestion of buying a kitchen and dining table that are of the same height and width (even exactly the same, if you can) so that during holidays you can just push them together and seat a large crowd. She also emphasized going into debt to get the entire couch set because "by the time you save up enough money to get the last chair, they won't be making it anymore!" Don't bother with love seats- they're not big enough if you have sons, who like to sprawl :) Definitely get a recliner so that when you're pregnant, you can put your feet up; but don't get the kind that is a part of the couch because your husband will always sit there and it will be uncomfortable to cuddle with him. Priceless gems, eh?

I think my favorite thing she told me (I was quite surprised she did, as she had to bend down and whisper it so others couldn't hear) had to do with leaving a "surprise" in her husband's suit pocket when he went on a business trip as a friendly reminder of his loving wife. However, he reached into his pocket and didn't notice it, and when he pulled his hand out, it flew onto the floor and several people bent to help him pick it up. He then found himself needing to explain why he had a pair of red panties in his suit pocket. Tee hee.

Anyway, though I'm pretty sure nobody who reads this is married (all 3 of you), I thought I'd encourage anyone to comment with their favorite piece of marriage advice.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

It's Paste, isn't it?

I had an ingenious idea the other day. After a bit of googling, I'm finding out that I'm not the only one, BUT I want credit for thinking of it anyway.

Why does everyone insist on selling tomato paste in a can? I've never used a recipe that called for a whole can... it's always tablespoons at a time. Then I'm thrown into this frantic state of "I have an open can of tomato paste sitting in my fridge (ew) and I need to only make recipes that call for tomato paste until it's gone". Yeah, I could dump it into a small tupperware container (and waste some of the scrapings)... OR I could buy it in a tube! (just like toothpaste) Hello! What an amazing idea! I'll squirt out my tablespoon, screw the lid back on, and stick it back into my refrigerator until I need it again. Genious! Yet, grocery stores insist upon selling it in cans... Perhaps I'll have to do all my tomato paste shopping online, from now on.